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Olga Irzak
EDUCATION

Masters student in the Systems group under the supervision of Eyal de Lara, University of Toronto, Sept. 2008 - present.

  • Focusing on increasing efficiency of data-intensive applications in a cloud computing environment by sharing RAM between VMs (in the disguise of a RAM backed file system) and opimizing scheduling to maximize datasets to be shared
  • Activities: Organized biweekly 'research talk' lunches with DECE profs (F'09); Student coordinator for new grad visit day for the systems group (W'09); CS for Grade 8 girls volunteer; Engineers Without Borders member.
  • OGS award (09/10), Helen Sawyer Hogg graduate admission award (08/09)
Bachelor of Mathematics Honours Computer Science Major with combinatorics & Optimization minor Co-op, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Sept 2002 to Dec. 2007
  • Graduated with distinction.
  • Rene Descartes Scholarship, J.R. Coutts International Experience Award
  • Volunteer global representative for incoming exchange students (Jan.04-Apr.06)
Exchange student at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, Oct. 2006 to Feb. 2007. Research Assistant Mar. to Apr. 2007.

Exchange student at Lunds Universitet, Lund, Sweden, Sept. to Dec. 2004



TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Instructor for CSC369 - Operating Systems, University of Toronto
  • Preparing and delivering lectures
  • Composing assignments, tests and marking schemes
  • Partitioning work (labs, marking, proctoring, proofreading) among the TAs
  • Supporting students in the form of office hours, emails, bulletin board, website maintenance, special situation considerations, etc.

 Winter 2011

Co-instructor for CSC148 - Introduction to Computer Science, University of Toronto

Summer 2010

Help Center, University of Toronto
  • Helping students with any CS course, focusing on systems, hardware and programming.

 Winter, Fall 2010

CSC369 Operating Systems, University of Toronto
  • Teaching tutorials, office hours & marking
  • Taught a 2 hr and 1 hr lectures on virtual memory
Fall 2008, 2009 & Winter 2009

INTERNSHIP EXPERIENCE
Google, Mountain View May  - August 2009
  • Infrastructure team
PARC, Palo Alto April  - July 2008
  • Participated in the development of a distributed documents system
  • Contributed to an intelligent search module which is activity and version aware
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland March  - July 2007
  • Worked on a prototype for a project regarding "Loss and Delay Accountability for the Internet" using CLICK open source router.
  • Theoretical aspect: analyzed the possible security risks of the design.
  • Presented the project in a poster session at EPFL
  • Project has appeared in ICNP (International Conference on Network Protocols), 2007: “Loss and Delay Accountability for the Internet” by K. Argyraki (EPFL, Switzerland), P. Maniatis (Intel Research, USA), O. Irzak, S. Ashish (EPFL, Switzerland), S. Shenker (UC Berkeley, USA)
Microsoft, Redmond May  - August 2006
  • Developed a command line tool for the harddrive encryption team (in C and COM) using Windows Vista API. The tool's purpose is to repartition a given harddisk appropriately, switch the active volume and migrate the BCD hive if needed in a safe manner.
  • Presented the project to the security team
Business Objects, Vancouver May  - Dec. 2005
  • Added functionality to applications using C++, COM, Java
  • Developed web application functionality using JSF, JavaBeans, CSS, XML, Javascript, .NET
  • Worked on internationalized applications supported on multiple platforms
Research in Motion, Ottawa April  - August 2004
  • Embedded programming / debugging in C as a small part of a project porting the RIM's OS & applications to run on a client's OS
  • Programming and debugging applications in Java
  • Interacting with customers to gather information for requirement documents
  • Product testing
COMPUTER PROJECTS
Systems:
  • C - with a partner, implemented an RTOS from scratch and wrote an application running on the OS to manage & prevent crashes on a train set with unreliable sensors (about 85% accuracy)
  • C++ - added functionality to an operating system
  • CUDA - as part of a team (of 4), ported a protein crystallography algorithm to the GPU. The runtime went from ~2 hours to 6 minutes due to optimizations which took advantage of the GPU's memory architecture
  • Java with JLex and CUP - compiler for a procedural language into MIPS
Graphics:
  • C++ - wrote a ray tracer engine with multiple light sources, reflections, shadows and bounding volumes
  • OpenGL with C++ -implemented a 3D view killer snowman game, a tetris game, designed and animated a puppet
  • TCL/TK & gtkmm - created a drawing program and used it for various GUI implementations
Applications:
  • Java - implemented a synchronized surveillance system over a network
  • SQL, JDBC, swing, Java servlet and Oracle - created a movie booking system and simulation for product tracking system in a factory
  • C++ - implemented a bidirectional text parser and formatter
  • JavaScript with DHTML and CSS - implemented a web game based on Arachnoid.
PUBLICATIONS
INTERESTS
  • Passionate about sustainability and ecology
  • An avid traveler and an aspiring polyglot
  • Kitesurfing addict, also enjoy gymnastics, swimming and snowboarding